1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to devices that produce a series of perforations in pieces of bakery goods for the purpose of easily separating the bakery goods into portions. In particular, the present invention relates to devices that produce such perforations in a continuous manner to a continuous stream of individual pieces of bakery goods.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Bakery goods or products such as English muffins are normally separated into two portions or halves by the consumer for the purpose of spreading butter, margarine, jam or the like on the inside surface. An English muffin is not easily separable and if torn apart by hand, produces quite a mess. Normally a knife is used to cut the English muffin, but a fair amount of skill and dexterity is needed due to the relative thinness and large width of an English muffin. For these reasons, consumers prefer to have their English muffins partially slit or perforated so that the English muffin may easily be torn apart.
In the prior art, two common methods of tearing open an English muffin include the use of a knife, as mentioned previously, by a single consumer enjoying a single English muffin or the use of a band saw type blade by the baker producing a quantity of English muffins. The band saw method may be used to either completely cut the English muffin into two sections, keeping the two sections together until the muffin is ready to be eaten, or to produce a slit allowing the consumer to tear the remainder of the muffin open. The slit is preferable since it makes use of the traditional method of eating an English muffin. From a consumer standpoint, however, a rough texture of the separated English muffin halves is greatly preferred to a sliced surface. Partial perforations or slicing makes it possible to tear open the muffin and still have a rough texture.